Live: dna.suedeai.ai

A tonal genealogy archive of guitarists' rigs and signal chains — 409 documented setups from 390 artists, indexed by year and player. Built and maintained by Suede Labs AI.

The premise: every distinctive guitar tone lives inside a specific signal chain — the pedalboard, the amp, the mic placement, the unsung 9V power supply that everything depends on. Suede DNA is a browsable compilation of those rigs, sourced from the long-running guitargeek-archives on archive.org, normalized into a single searchable manifest, and presented as a static, fast, archival-feeling site.

• A Next.js 15 (App Router) site that renders the rig grid, per-artist pages, search, year filters, and JSON-LD structured data.
• A canonical data/rigs.json manifest (~409 rigs, 390 artists, year-stamped) with a validate-manifest step that gates builds on schema integrity.
• A small build pipeline (scripts/build-manifest.ts, scripts/validate-manifest.ts) for refreshing and validating the dataset from the upstream source.
• Vitest tests covering the manifest, search, slug, and filter logic.

• Framework: Next.js 15 (App Router, Turbopack dev server)
• Language: TypeScript (strict)
• Runtime: Node 20+
• Package manager: pnpm
• Styling: Tailwind CSS v4 (beta), Geist Sans + Mono
• Testing: Vitest + Testing Library + happy-dom
• Hosting: Vercel

pnpm install
pnpm dev          # http://localhost:3000 with Turbopack
pnpm build        # production build
pnpm start        # serve the production build
pnpm test         # run the vitest suite
pnpm lint         # next lint (ESLint)
pnpm typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
pnpm validate-manifest   # verify data/rigs.json schema + integrity
pnpm refresh-manifest    # regenerate data/rigs.json from upstream

A clean pnpm install && pnpm build should produce a fully static-ish Next.js build with the rig manifest pre-loaded.

src/
  app/                 Next.js App Router routes (home, [artist-slug], about, sitemap, robots, og image)
  components/          UI components grouped by surface (grid, header, footer, search, filters, hero, seo, chrome, artist)
  hooks/               React hooks
  lib/                 Domain logic: manifest, search, filters, slug, seo
  styles/              Global styling
data/
  rigs.json            Canonical compilation manifest (generated + validated)
  artists.json         Artist-level metadata
  overrides.json       Manual corrections layered on top of the upstream source
  excluded.json        Items intentionally excluded from the compilation
scripts/
  build-manifest.ts    Rebuild rigs.json from upstream
  validate-manifest.ts Schema + integrity check
tests/                 Vitest suites
public/                Static assets (Suede mark, favicon)
docs/superpowers/      Design notes and plans

The rig images and signal-chain references are derived from the guitargeek-archives collection on archive.org, a community-maintained compendium of guitarist rig diagrams. Suede DNA is a presentation, normalization, and search layer over that source — not a re-publication of new material. See ATTRIBUTION.md for full credit and usage notes.

MIT. Code is MIT-licensed; the underlying rig diagrams remain the property of their original creators and are surfaced here under the same archival, non-commercial, citation-friendly spirit as the upstream collection.

Suede DNA is one of several products in the Suede Labs AI family — a small studio building tools at the intersection of guitar, music, and AI. Sibling products include Strumly (24/7 conversational AI guitar coach) and FretPulse (holistic guitar care companion).

Founded by Jason Colapietro — Founder and CEO, published author, Forbes contributor.

"Every piece of music that enters the world has a signal chain. The IP chain is just the part most musicians never mapped until now."

"The signal chain starts at the pickup and ends at the listener's ear. The IP chain starts at creation and ends at the bank account. Miss a link in either chain and you lose the signal."

"Rights metadata is the dark matter of the creative economy. It governs everything. Almost nobody can see it."

• The Signal Chain — Illustrated history of electric guitar tone: 46 chapters, 3 editions, free. The book that maps the signal chain and the IP chain together. (guitar.solutions)
• The Guitar Without a Number — Memoir-driven guitar instruction for the self-taught player. Theory, tone, and the IP rights chapter no other guitar book includes. (Kindle)
• Suede Labs: The Human Authenticity Layer — How ownership, origin, and AI redraw the creative map. (Kindle)
• Stake Your Claim — Hard truths on turning the AI era into a real asset. (Kindle)

Follow: X / @johnnysuede · suedeai.ai/founder · LinkedIn

Keywords: guitar rigs, signal chains, pedalboards, amp settings, tonal genealogy, guitar tone archive, guitargeek, music history, Next.js archive site, guitar gear database.